


kingdoms are forged from dragonfire

by TheElusiveBadger



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Rhaegar lives, F/M, Gen, House Stark, House Targaryen, Jon Snow is a Targaryen, M/M, R plus L equals J
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-23
Updated: 2016-06-23
Packaged: 2018-07-16 18:05:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7278346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheElusiveBadger/pseuds/TheElusiveBadger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rhaegar Targaryen lives, but the realm still bleeds, and the Targaryens fracture among the ashes of their ancestors.</p>
            </blockquote>





	kingdoms are forged from dragonfire

**Author's Note:**

> This was kind of a spur of the moment fic based on a weird dream I had (truth be told, the dream was a bit more Borgiaesque than this turned out to be, but another time maybe, when my other fic is done). It was also written in about four hours so all mistakes are mine. I've gone through and edited, but undoubtedly I'll find more.

Jon is five name days when he leaves King’s Landing. The sun is bright and burning on the balcony where his father holds his hand, stone-faced and silent, as they wait for the ships to dock into port.

Jon Targaryen was born Jaehaerys, but no one ever calls him that.

Aegon, silver-haired and arrogant even at six, pouts, and glares daggers at the ocean. If eyes could become dragonfire, the water would ignite into a furnace in seconds. Rhaenys, who’s never forgiven her mother’s tear tracks, or forgotten the wolf maid’s face, slack and beautiful even in death, smiles.

 

 

Rhaegar Targaryen is a good King. If that doesn’t comfort the North—whose trade is prospering, providing stores of food for the winter—for the loss of their Lady Stark, then his son fostered in her ancestral home is a boon he hopes calms the seeds of rebellion still brewing in their frosty halls. The realm has seen too much of war, and after the Greyjoy Rebellion, he’s tired of the visions of torn limbs and mud made from blood.

He parts with his son with a heavy heart, and heavier words.

“The dragon must have three heads.”

Fitting, that the prophecy that saw his love for Lyanna bloom, is the last thing he ever says to her son.

 

 

Rhaenys wakes up screaming in the night from dreams of wildfire, singeing her white dress and licking up her dark hair. She stares at the scars on her dark arms, brutal and ugly, a reminder of her grandfather’s mad eyes and her mother’s torment, and lashes out. Her mirror cracks, glass scattering everywhere, and Balerion runs, while red covers up the marks of her father’s sins.

She walks out, trailing rivers, and gazes upon the rebuilt husk of her cursed city. Her mouth twists, ugly and wretched, and she dreams of sand, envious all the while of Jon’s home of snow.

 

 

Ned Stark remembers Lyanna’s bed of blood, and welcomes his nephew with his promise in mind. He welcomes the boy, small and wide-eyed and every inch a _wolf_ , and breathes a sigh of relief as the bond between Robb and Jon grows, deep and rooted like the weirwood trees.

Catelyn holds Arya in her arms, and teaches Sansa to stitch, biting her nails to the quick, as worry and doubt gnaw, while the boys cross wooden swords in the tilt yard. She remembers Robert’s anger, and King Rhaegar’s dark violet eyes when he pardoned Ned, and she prays to the Seven for her family’s survival.

No one answers her, but Jon comes down with the pox, and she sits by his side all night, the sound of his ragged breaths a mournful song, and thinks that for better or worse, he is a part of her life.

 

 

Princess Elia Martell thinks nothing, charred bone and ash that she is. If she could think, she’d have counseled her husband against sending his son away, and encouraged the bond between siblings. She’d remember the Blackfyre Rebellion, and the ruination that family causes.

But Elia is dead, and Rhaegar is lost in his grief, so he doesn’t remember.

Lyanna Stark is dead, too. She’d remember that winter is coming.

 

 

Aegon hates his little brother, Baelor, who is as cruel as his namesake was pious, and longs for a playmate. He begs to go North, to visit Jon, and ignores his older sister’s sneers, and Daenerys’ confusion.

His father denies him. He’s always denying him.

 

 

Robb and Jon stay up late whispering tales of knights and valor, their heads, red and black curls, buried underneath the furs. Jon doesn’t forget his siblings, not really, but they’ve become a distant memory. Aegon was always with their father, or the Maesters, and there was little time to play, and Rhaenys kept herself apart from him.

Robb is close, and his cousins are _his_ in a way that Aegon and Rhaenys never were.

The boys dream of swords, and battle, and a proud smile on Ned Stark’s face.

Three years after Jon comes to Winterfell, he and Robb kneel in front of a weirwood. In unison, they swear, “From this day, to the end of my days, you are my brother, and I will be true to you in all things.”

 

 

No one ever asks the Kingsguard anything. Despite this, Ser Jaime Lannister remembers driving his sword into Aerys’ back after Elia burned, and the mad king’s cries of “kill them all.” He remembers wrestling the little princess out of the flames. He stands guard over her, and vows that no harm will ever come to her again.

Ser Arthur Dayne remembers laying down his sword when Ned Stark came, sealed letter of entrance from _King_ Rhaegar, and the smell of death and decay perfumed with blue roses. He remembers holding Queen Lyanna’s son in his arms, small and perfect and Northern, and vows that he will grow to live beyond his mother’s years. He remembers this, when he’s freezing his balls off far from his Southern roots.

Ser Barristan Selmy watches over Princess Daenerys, who dreams of dragons and cringes away from Prince Viserys. He remembers Queen Rhaella’s pale face, drawn and tired, and keeps the boy away from his sister. _No more_ , the Queen said to him, as she took her last breath, _no more_.

Lord Commander Gerold Hightower doesn’t think about much other than protecting King Rhaegar, and Ser Oswell Whent trains Prince Aegon to protect the realm, but all agree on one thing: Prince Viserys Targaryen is as mad as his father before him.

They hope that King Rhaegar will send him away.

He doesn’t.

 

 

Prince Jon Targaryen grows up loved in Winterfell, and loves his cousins more than anyone, and they become a pack of wolves. He plucks blue winter roses and lays them at his mother’s grave, wishing his name was _Stark_.

Princess Rhaenys Targaryen doesn’t miss her Northern brother. She longs for Dorne, and her mother, and the hot sun upon her skin. She gets none of her desires, so she clings tightly to Aegon, and makes sure he grows as their mother desired.

Prince Aegon Targaryen grows, bitter and lonely, and tired. He sleeps with whores, pays them for their time and their silence, and does his duties as a prince, all the while craving a companion.

 

 

Prince Aegon is seventeen name days when his father dies. King Rhaegar is laid to rest with songs and laments, but King Aegon knows his father went to his grave happy. He was a man in mourning for sixteen years, and his eyes were ever sad.

The crown is heavy on Aegon’s head, and he thinks about his brother Jon, who he hasn’t seen in years. A pointy hat, Jon used to call it. It doesn’t feel like a hat, though.

The raven’s sent, but it will be days before it reaches Winterfell.

“It’s time for him to come home,” Aegon says, and watches Rhaenys’ face fall, and Baelor pout. Cersei, her expression a mask of fake mourning, clutches Daeron and Visenya close to her. They’re as blonde as him, but gold where he is silver, and he feels no pull to them, no bond. They may as well be strangers.

Daenerys’s eyes fill with relief when he banishes Viserys, her arms a mess of yellow bruises. She’s wraps in on herself, her arms curve across her chest as if she can hide herself, and Aegon thinks she’s never looked lovelier.

 

 

Jon mourns, and hides away for days, after the letter comes. Eventually, Arya draws him out to the tilt yard, waving her sword about, and Robb rides with him through the countryside. Theon attempts to take him whoring, while Sansa offers condolences and sad words. Bran continues to climb, and Rickon is as wild as ever. He mourns his father, but he didn’t know him, not really.

He knows the North and Winterfell. He knows the godswood, and the forest, and the six direwolves they’ve found.

Uncle Ned and Aunt Catelyn ask him what he intends to do.

Aegon commands him back. Robb asks him to stay.

It’s not a choice. Not really.

 

 

Rhaenys frowns to see her brother’s defeat. His shoulders are slumped, his head in one hand, with the other balls into a fist around the parchment. Cersei’s eyes flash with triumph, and she wants to punch the lioness in the face.

She asks Aegon to send them away. He complies, because he can’t deny her anything. She doesn’t know yet that it’s folly.

 

 

Daenerys sails to Dragonstone. She comes back with three eggs and presents them before the throne. Rhaenys cringes at the sight of them, and Aegon smiles, joyful and arrogant, as if he’s a child of six again, and his family is still whole.

“The dragon has three heads,” he says, and Daenerys is gifted Summerhall for her efforts.

It’s poor compensation.

 

 

Aegon makes marriage pacts. Margaery Tyrell for him, Renly Baratheon for Rhaenys, and Princess Arianne Martell for Jon. Strong matches, that will tie the South together. He sends a letter north, to Lord Eddard Stark, and offers Daenerys to his heir. It never makes it there.

He governs, and governs well, while he waits for his brother to come home. He doesn’t know what enemy he will face, but his father instilled in him belief in prophecy above all else.

There is an enemy, though he doesn’t know what kind, and so they will fight it. The eggs sit in a basket nestled on a silver cushion on his windowsill: a crowning achievement.

When all three of his father’s eldest children are together again, he knows that they will hatch.

He forgets about Viserys, as well as Daenerys, and his younger siblings. He forgets about the lions.

It’s not his first mistake.

 

 

The North remembers. They remember that the Starks ruled for thousands of years before the dragons came. Honor is what holds them to the realm.

Honor fades with Lord Ned Stark. He goes beyond the Wall with Benjen and he never returns.

The Umbers call Robb Stark the King in the North. He stands, a boy not ready to be a man, as they give him gifts of burden and treason. Catelyn smiles through her tears, and Jon bows, a prince in front of a King, with an offered sword.

 

 

Aegon punches a wall, and breaks down in tears, his rage and disappointment overtaking everything. Rhaenys laughs, bitter and jarring, while Daenerys, in Summerhall, remembers her dark-haired nephew.

“He was always more of a wolf,” she tells Ser Barristan, before he’s called away to march North. “He was never a true dragon.”

Aegon sits on a throne of rusted swords, a pointed hat on his head, and calls for the deaths of the Northern lords. He wants Robb Stark brought to him in chains. He wants their house eradicated. His father was weak, he thinks, to let a traitor such as Ned Stark remain Warden of the North.

He never mentions Jon.

 

 

Jon sits up at night, sometimes, and wonders about Aegon. He fights for Robb, and his mother’s homeland, and believes that the North should rule themselves. It’s not honorable, not what Uncle Ned would have done, but the North has been calling for it since the deaths of Lord Rickard and Brandon Stark, a silent and brewing snowstorm.

Robb is a good King, and Jon is proud to be his cousin. The Targaryen’s forged their kingdom out of dragon fire, but Robb is building his with honor and fealty.

So he tells himself he’s not deposing his brother, because Aegon is still a King. He tells himself that he’ll write him, one day, when this war is over, and explain.

 

 

Lord Tywin Lannister whispers in the King’s ear, and their armies join together. Cersei Lannister comes back to court, and her three gilded children stand beside her. She smirks, triumphant, and is full of viscous satisfaction at the thought that the wolves brought about their own destruction.

If not for Lyanna Stark, her son would have been second in line.

It’s no matter, though. The Northern bastard will die soon, as a traitor to the crown.

Then she will deal with Aegon.

 

 

The Wall calls for aid, so Robb splits up his army. Some to go North, and protect their lands from the wildlings, others to go South, to protect their lands from the lions and dragons. Bran and Rickon sit, safe, in Winterfell, and Sansa rides to Karhold, nervous but ready for a wedding cloak.

He’s kept his lands safe, so far, and the North rejoices in their new King. He makes marriage pacts, as well. He promises himself to a Frey, for the protection of the Twins, and gives up Arya to them as well. Then he promises his cousin to the Mormonts, and doesn’t care that Jon’s not his to give.

The Starks have always endured. Each of his decisions are as hard and strong as winter.

 

 

Prince Viserys comes with an army of sellswords across the Narrow Sea. He’s too far gone to remember that the throne is not his. That his sister was never meant to be his.

They sweep across the Stormlands, and Dorne calls its banners, to fight for their King’s lands. It’s bloody, and brutal, and thousands lie dead upon the ground before it's done.

Summerhall burns, and the dragons come.

Viserys dies in the flames; Daenerys emerges unburnt.

 

 

Aegon is a skeletal husk of a man. His face is wane, and his eyes bloodshot. Where once were muscles, and strength, are now mere sinews of rope, stretched and broken. Still, he sits on his throne, and he governs.

“The North will be subdued,” he tells Rhaenys, whose been silent since the death of their uncle, Oberyn Martell. “Then we’ll bring our brother home.”

She wants to tell him that she doesn’t care if Jon is here or not. She wonders why he cannot believe that _Jon_ does not want to be here.

“The dragon has three heads,” he reminds her, and doesn’t flinch when she screams.

 

 

Tywin works in secret, as he always has. He’s waited many years, for this, and nothing will stop him now. Jaime stands guard at Princess Rhaenys’ door, and reminds himself of the white cloak he wears. He grips his sword tighter while he tries to push away the memory of Cersei’s lips, her breasts, and the three babes who call him uncle.

Arthur swore an oath. Arthur waits, and plots, and doesn’t acknowledge the twist in his gut as he gazes upon Jon’s smiles due to the love the Starks give his charge. He holds his hand constantly upon his sword, and waits. Arthur swore an oath.

Barristan is not performing any deeds. He’s got a red smile across his throat, and a crying silver-haired girl who mourns.

 

 

Robb falls in love with a woman from Volantis with dark, flashing eyes. Jon warns him. His mother warns him. He doesn’t listen, and he promises himself to her in the godswood. They are fierce, passionate, and as hungry as wolves when they come together.

Jon goes North to search for Uncle Ned. The wildings have made homes of bones and fear within Castle Black, and the few remaining members of the Watch meet him in Mole’s Town. Lord Commander Allister Thorne spits at his feet, but Jon does not take offense.

He captures a girl with flames for hair. He falls in love, too. She taunts him, and he sinks deeper and deeper. They make love, once, and she tells him, “You know nothing, Jon Targaryen.”  

She dies, soon after, speared through the chest by one of the Watch, and he doesn’t.

As he rides home, to Winterfell, he remembers his father’s words then, and vows to make peace with his brother and sister.

Dragonglass killed the enemy, and the dragon has three heads.

 

 

“Kill him,” Rhaenys tells him. “Will you lose your crown over another fucking Stark?”

“Jon is not a Stark,” he reminds her.

“Kill him,” Daenerys tells him. “This kingdom is not meant for wolves.”

“Kill him,” his council tells him. “He is a traitor.”

“Kill him,” Baelor and Cersei and Tywin fucking Lannister tell him.

Aegon remembers playing hide-and-seek in the gardens with a dark-haired boy. He remembers storms, and holding his brother close while their father sung them songs of old. He doesn’t want to kill him. He is King, and what he says goes, so he orders him captured again.

The Starks have twisted him. Made him forget who he is. Aegon will make him remember.

“Take him from the line of succession, then,” Queen Margaery tells him. Her stomach is as flat as the day they wed, and the sellsword army is still sweeping across his realm. Baelor is a twisted prick, though, and the realm would bleed all the more.

So, he gives permission for a massacre instead.

 

 

 

Robb smiles, as he gazes at his wife. Talisa’s s glowing, her face bright and so very alive, and he remembers her words, ““I carry your little prince or princess inside me.”

Then, her face is pale and twisted and dead. He doesn’t feel the arrows, one, then two, then three, when they pierce him. He doesn’t hear the mocking of the Freys as he crawls to her, nor his mother’s cries.

He hears her pleading though.

“Mother,” he says, before he, too, dies. Distantly, Grey Wind howls.

He’ll never know they what they do with his head.

 

 

Jon glares at the flayed man banners hanging over Winterfell’s walls. Shaggydog’s head is lolling about somewhere and Rickon’s been pulled from the field, body full of holes. Jon vows that the Bolton’s will burn for this, with fire and blood. His army stands behind him, wrathful and calling for vengeance, and he thinks of his missing cousin Bran. Only the gods know where he is now.

Bolton’s married Arya to his bastard son. He hopes she guts the wretch in his sleep.

The Northerners call him “Your Grace,” as they always have, but he shudders to hear it now. One day, he will bury his cousin in the crypt where he belongs, and one day he’ll avenge him as well. More fire, and more blood.

He calls for the invasion the next morning, but when he wakes up, he only sees Ser Arthur, and he’s miles away from home with Ghost left behind.

He doesn’t ask how the Kingsguard smuggled him away. Ser Arthur has always had tricks up his sleeve.

 

 

Rhaenys flinches away from the dragons when they spout their bursts of red heat. None of them fly to her. She doesn’t mind, but it concerns Aegon. Jaime Lannister shields her, and she retreats more often into her chambers.

Daenerys smirks, gleeful, each time, as they slither up her arms.

“Their mother,” she calls herself, but they aren’t hers to keep.

They blast flame at Baelor, and show their fangs to Cersei. Their hatred runs deep and as hot as their fire. 

Aegon doesn’t contemplate the reality of that much. That is another mistake.

 

 

Sansa doesn’t believe in songs anymore. Her brothers are all dead, or missing, and her cousin has abandoned them. Her sister is married to a monster. She smiles at her husband, Torrhen Karstark, and strokes his arm, and reminds him that she’s Queen of the North.

She forgets about the wildlings, because they don’t matter. They’ll fend for themselves.

The siege of Winterfell continues.

She doesn’t know about the White Walkers. That is not her mistake.

 

 

Darkness and light, Aegon thinks, when his brother is brought to him, sullen and angry. One cannot exist without the other.

Jon’s hair is as dark and curly as he remembers. He’s handsomer, now, and Aegon looks for a trace of himself in his brother’s face.

“He’s all _her_ ,” his sister tells him. She rages at Jon, and hates, and leaves when one of the dragon’s flies to him, to perch on his shoulder and make a nest in his hair.

Jon freezes, as the creature bonds with him, and whispers, “Ghost.”

Aegon hugs him anyway, and pretends not to care that his brother is stiff, or that his arms never move. He rejects the council's suggestions that he lock his brother up in a guarded tower, and swears that his will make his family whole.   

Aegon’s own dragon is curled up on the throne, and Aunt Daenerys is sitting on the edge, with the third resting on her lap, looking at her Northern nephew in shock.

 

 

Arianne travels from Dorne at her father and cousin’s bequest. She marries a Northern traitor prince with lust in her eyes for she has always loved pretty things. There is nothing but distance in his. They marry in a Sept, and he stumbles through the words, for these gods are not his own.

“Ygritte,” he whispers, that night, underneath the sweat and moans, and she grips his hair and silences him with her mouth.  

 

 

Aegon flies with his brother to Dragonstone, and leaves his sister and aunt behind. He hopes the trip will forge a brotherhood between dragons again.

That is his greatest mistake.

 

 

 

Rhaenys draws patterns in blood as the life drains from her body. She’s alone. Her husband is a mummer’s farce, and her mother is long since gone. Her father, as well, for what he was worth.

She wishes, for a second or two, that she’d gone with Aegon and Jon to Dragonstone. Just a few brief moments, before she lets death embrace her like her mother’s arms, and breathes her last. She dies without a hint of Targaryen madness in her eyes, and for that, the gods left her blessed.

Vile men present her ruined corpse to Prince Baelor and Queen Cersei. The Mountain heads to Dragonstone.

 

 

Queen Margaery Tyrell hears the sounds of Loras’ screams as the militant faith beat him for his sins. She curls up in the corner, in a gown of sack and squalor, and runs her hands over her stomach. Her moon’s blood has failed to come three times.

An heir, she thinks, I’m carrying his heir and I must be strong. They will not break me.

 

 

Arya stabs Ramsey Bolton, and escapes with Theon’s help out of her childhood home. Sansa is at Karhold, and she thinks she could go there, but her cousin is south.

“He’s betrayed us,” Theon tells her, but Theon betrayed them as well. He went home to the Iron Islands, and then took Winterfell. The Boltons took him, and broke him, and now they’re both broken things.

“Jon loves me,” she says, and knows its true. So she heads south, away from her sister, and away from the White Walkers.

 

 

“The dead are rising,” Jon tells Aegon, who paces up and down the beach. It’s too hot in the South, and Jon misses the cold of the North. He misses the hearth fire in Winterfell, and the hot springs under the ground. He misses snowflakes in Robb’s hair and Aunt Catelyn’s hugs.

“That is our enemy,” Aegon whispers, and his eyes are gleaming with madness. “The dragon has three heads.”

 

 

Daenerys rides away from King’s Landing on the back of her dragon, Viserion, the other two beside her, and curses the Lannisters. Fire and blood will come to them. She will burn Cersei, with her golden hair and wine-soaked breath, and Baelor, her loathsome nephew.

She flies north, though she doesn’t know why. She despises them, and their traitorous hearts. Her other dragons fly east.

 

 

It takes both of them, three Kingsguard, and dragonfire, to bring down The Mountain. His blood taints the rocks on the cliff, and his brain matter mixes with the dirt. It’s poor fare for the birds of Dragonstone.

Sers Oswell Whent, Arthur Dayne, and Gerold Hightower caution against their leaving, but Aegon is King, and so he does what he must. They are commanded to stay behind. Their duty has never felt more bitter.

Jon mounts a green dragon and misses white fur. Aegon mounts another and they head north.

Jon names her Ryanna. Aegon calls his Rhaegal.

 

 

Baelor is a poor King. Baelor is a false King. Tywin rules the realm with an golden fist from the Tower of the Hand and hunts for the remaining dragons.

Dorne goes to war, and Princess Visenya, an innocent, dies. Prince Trystane mourns her, but his family does not care.

Cersei remembers the wood witch, beats at her breast, and tears at her hair.

 

 

Sansa knows about the White Walkers, now, and thanks all the gods for Stannis Baratheon. His army is large, and disciplined, but they know nothing of the snows of the North. She tells him, and he heeds her words, and she wonders why he is here, and not in Storm’s End with his afflicted daughter and large-eared wife.

“I didn’t love Robert,” he tells her, one night, after his red witch has retreated to bed. Gendry, the blacksmith they brought, flinches in the doorway, and Sansa doesn’t ask why he’s still here. “But he was my brother. Rhaegar took his life, for treason, and that was just. But he loved your father.”

Stannis cares for duty, but Sansa knows duty to family, and she thinks, deep down, he knows it, too.

A fat man named Samwell Tarly finds them, and tells them to use dragonglass when death comes. They don’t have enough.

 

 

Margaery grows larger in her cell, and her beauty begins to fade. Her hair frizzes, and her lips are cracked. Loras dies, from hunger, and from torment, and Renly Baratheon is taken down far, far from King’s Landing. When he leaves the world, he does not think of a joyful reunion with his wife, but of the permanent parting with his lover.

Cersei comes and kicks at her and scratches at her. The baby inside Margaery punches and rips in distress.

 

 

Arianne sends out the Sand Snakes. They go with calls of vengeance staining poison on their lips and on their blades. Her womb quickens, though whether the babe is her husband’s, or someone else’s, she knows naught. Black hair, after all, won’t say much.

She contemplates, for months, about a babe’s blue face, if her child is a Stark.

“The Lannisters and the Starks have taken too much from Dorne,” she tells Trystane, a ghost in luxurious clothes.

 

 

Jaime Lannister steals away from King’s Landing in the dead of night on a ship with his brother. Tyrion Lannister hides in an empty vat of wine, and remembers Baelor’s purple face. The King is Dead. Long live the King.

“He’s not dead,” Jaime says, and Tyrion muses that his twin is going mad. “King Aegon still lives.”

King Aegon hasn’t been heard from in months. Neither has Prince Jon or Princess Daenerys.

“The dragons are gone,” Tyrion tells him, and remembers when he wished for one of his own.

They part ways at the next harbor. Tyrion hides in the Free Cities, while Jaime heads for the Riverlands, and a castle under siege.

A Lannister would join the Frey army. Jaime is a Kingsguard, however, and the Blackfish is distant kin by marriage to the royal family.

He meets the ugliest woman he’s ever seen on the way there. She’s looking for a Stark girl, Arya, and she’s dressed in dented armor. She comes with him, nattering on about her vows to a dead woman, and they skirt around the encampment of Freys as best they can.

 

 

Beyond the Wall is frigid, and not even the fire in Aegon’s blood can keep the frost from numbing his fingers, his lips, and his toes. The trees are dark and as tall as towers, looming over them as much a threat as the walkers. Jon’s gods are here, somewhere, but Aegon has never felt more lost.

The dragons hate it, as well. Rhaegal is huffing in displeasure, and Ryanna cares not for touching down even though she must. His brother’s white direwolf howls, and Jon hugs him tight every night. They find Dark Sister buried under a weirwood tree, and Aegon clutches Blackfyre while Daenerys teaches the dragons to burn on command.

The remaining wildlings flock to them. They do not kneel, but the large one with the red beard calls them “prettier than half my daughters” and “good enough folks.”

Together, their ragged, uncivilized army battles against the White Walkers.

 

 

Sansa hears the tale of Azor Ahai, The Prince Who Was Promised, from Melisandre, Stannis’ red witch. She thinks about Jon, then she thinks about Jon’s father, King Rhaegar, and his love for her Aunt Lyanna.

He almost tore the realm apart for her, she remembers, and Jon told us it was over a prophecy.

“Nonsense,” she tells Melisandre, and walks away.

 

 

Theon Greyjoy heads home, to salt and algae, and then flees with his sister, Asha, from the madness of his Uncle Euron who pays the iron price to be a king.

My true father was lost beyond the Wall, he says to himself, and my true brothers are gone. Jon—and there’s a pang of anger there, and regret, and understanding, when he thinks of the sullen prince—I have no idea where he is, but Arya will find him. She has wolf’s blood, she does, and the pack will survive.

Krakens do not belong in packs, and Asha will be fine without him, but still he stays.

 

 

Aegon punches his brother, just once, when Jon says that Robb was a better man. Anger and jealousy comes out in every bit of force in that hit, and he hates his father for sending his brother away.

His brother. Not Robb Stark’s. The man is dead, he thinks, and I’m the reason, and still he commands more of my brother’s loyalty then I do.

He wonders, some nights, and clutches his sword in his hands, if Jon knows. His brother stares at him with grey, angry eyes, and he’s far from a dragon in those moments.

Daenerys rolls her eyes, and goes off on her own, letting them fight it out. She comes back the next morning with a boy whose eyes are white and two crannogmen.

Jon clutches his cousin tight and Aegon seethes.

 

 

The crown is too big on his head, Daeron knows. He’s awkward, and fumbling, when he stares at Margaery. She’s beautiful, even with her dead eyes, and her deflated stomach, and he promises her he will give her many more babes.

Living babes, he thinks, remembering the description of his niece’s twisted, putrid form. His crown is made of death and despair. His father dead. His brothers are dead and so are his sisters, and probably his aunt. He’s got a dead uncle and two missing ones. Only his mother and his grandfather are left.

His grandfather sends forces north to subdue Sansa Stark who has retaken Winterfell. Foolishly, Daeron wonders why he should rule the North.

What he has already is too much.

 

 

Arianne names herself Queen over the ashes of her father’s body and doesn’t regret it. Dorne bends the knee to her and rejoices. She sends a raven to the Sword of the Morning, Dorne’s most glorious son, and hopes he comes.

She doesn’t annul her marriage. Her daughter’s grey eyes look up at her from the cradle and if she thinks about murder, well, she remembers that Myriah has the blood of three ancient lines of Kings and Queens flowing through her veins.

They will make Dorne strong again. The realm is fractured, the seven kingdoms divided.

Truly, she thinks, with some measure of amusement, Robert Baratheon won his rebellion after all.

 

 

Nymeria howls and Arya looks through her eyes at night. She turns north, instead of south, and makes for home. She sees Summer roughhousing with Ghost in the Land of Always Winter, and she gazes at Jon, tired and wary. She sees Lady, perched on a cushion of her own next to Sansa’s new throne.

When she gets home, she watches the muscles play out in the arms and stomach of a young, dark-haired man smithing in the forge, and thinks about challenging him to a duel.

 

 

Jaime Lannister is part of the Kingsguard and will be until he dies. He swore to father no children, but that’s already been broken. He will own no lands, but that’s never bothered him because he doesn’t want Casterly Rock.

All he’d once wanted was Cersei. Her, and to serve his King, the man who continued to let him live after he betrayed his oaths.

Brienne of Tarth is rigid and too full of honor. He wants her, he respects her, but he can’t marry her. Her helps her and the Blackfish hold Riverrun, and when Edmure Tully slips in like an eel, he dies with thoughts of her in his head.

She sails away, with tears on her cheeks, intent on keeping her oath.

 

 

Daenerys crawls into bed with Aegon one night, but he pushes her away. She’s beautiful with her violet eyes and her silver hair, but carnal relations between relations is what caused his grandfather’s madness. She snarls at him, and storms out, as he sits up with shaking hands.

Jon glares at her two mornings later, and Aegon wonders if she visited his brother as well.

“Viserys wanted me as his,” she once told Aegon, and it seemed like a lifetime ago. “But I never wanted to be his. I wasn’t meant for _him_.”

She would have been happier, Aegon thinks, if she was born earlier. The realm would have been happier.

But the dragon needed to have three heads.

 

 

Sansa sends her army north beyond the Wall with fear in her heart. Bran has visited in her dreams, and so she recalls men from fighting the Lannisters near the Riverlands. She hopes it’s not a mistake.

Stannis Baratheon takes his men, and the red witch burns sacrifices in her godwood, defiling the ground that Sansa grew up on as they retreat. Once he’s gone, Sansa casts the woman away from her lands.

Arya goes, too, wild and rough, heedless of her sister’s terror. Gendry joins her, and Sansa clutches her son, Robert, to her chest.

Torrhen leaves and he looks like a knight in his armor. She wishes she still believed in songs.

 

 

Tywin Lannister dies a most ignoble end. A heart attack on the privy is the rumor in King’s Landing. A stroke is the official announcement.

Cersei Lannister imprisons Queen Margaery again, but this time, the Tyrells do not sit back idly. The King dies, in a hunting accident, and Cersei seizes up into a statue as the Reach’s forces raid the Sept of Baelor.

The Kingsguard stand behind Margaery, hands on their swords, and wait for their King. Her stomach is heavy with child again. She sits on the throne as regent with a smile that covers her thorns and hopes it will be a boy.

 

 

The Tyrells withdraw the army from the Riverlands. They do not care for oathbreakers, or men who kill others under guest right. Edmure throws one of the Frey’s off the roof of Riverrun’s gate and there’s a thrill of deep satisfaction that courses through him when it's done.

He calls Roslin and his son, Olyvar, home, but he doesn’t love them.

Family, duty, and honor are all that’s keeping them alive.

 

 

The Vale has kept itself out of the affairs of the realm as much as it can. If a boy named Petyr Baelish had made it into power in King’s Landing, perhaps Jon Arryn would have died younger than he did and his heir, Robert, would have bent to the will of those stronger than him.

Petyr Baelish, however, has made his fortune on other shores.

 

 

Tyrion sits in an inn in Braavos and drinks, wondering where whores go. He doesn’t know if he’s looking for Tysha or Shae. He sits, and he deliberates the merits of secrets.

The realm learns about Cersei and Jaime Lannister’s deceit long after it ceases to matter.

 

 

Bran leaves with sadness in his heart. He knows that he will never see Jon again, or his sisters. He doesn’t care about the crown he’s giving up. He returns to the three-eyed raven to accept his destiny. He knows that everyone else will inevitably find theirs.

His only regret is Meera. He thinks he should have kissed her at least once.

 

 

Arya pushes Gendry down into the snow and ignores his sputtering. She fucks him, and he clutches her close, and she wonders if this is what it’s like to be free.

The Others are frightening, but she does not accept death. Not today, she thinks, and stabs, and slashes, and dances a water dance.

Her goodbrother accepts the Stranger’s Kiss, but Torrhen’s always been a bit of a dunce anyway.

 

 

Jon sees Arya one last time before he dies. He thinks about his mother, long-faced and beautiful, with dark hair. He thinks about his father, melancholy and sad, a man he barely knew. He waits to greet his loved ones in death.

He doesn’t hate his brother, when he dies, but he doesn’t forgive him either.

Ryanna falls next to Rhaegal, after, and they are all locked in winter’s embrace as the fire in their eyes fade. The Night King dies with Jon’s and Aegon’s swords buried together in his chest.

 

 

Aegon’s mind is full of prophecy when he falls next to his brother, defeating the White Walkers for good. He thinks about Rhaenys, and his parents, and he hopes that his family can be what they were meant to be in death.

 

 

Viserion scorches the remains of the Others. Queen Daenerys marches with the remnants of a tired army back home. She doesn’t care about the North, or its ruined landscape, for it is not her problem. She returns Jon’s bones to Winterfell, and Torrhen’s to his wife.

The Tyrells offer their son Willis. He’s crippled, and not near as comely as either of her nephews. She accepts, anyway, and then weds a childless Margaery a third time to Lord Smalljon Umber in the North.

It might not be her problem, but the seven kingdoms are her birthright. One day, she will take them back. For her son, she thinks, with a hand on her stomach.

Viserion dies, alone on Dragonstone, where no more eggs remain.

 

 

Queen Sansa marries again, and King Theon is a decent husband. He won’t give her another child, but queens have to be content to sacrifice for the good of their kingdoms. She doesn’t let him rule, however, and although the North is angry about her choice, they simmer down when she rules, and rules well.

Queen Asha agrees to marry a Glover, and there is a pact to cease raiding and reaving in the North.

It’s not enough, but it’s something.

When Queen Sansa orders Gendry away, she does so with a heavy heart. A queen makes hard choices.

“Princesses,” she tells her sister, and they stand, red and brown, calm and wild, in the tiltyard, “do not have the luxury of choice.”

Arya rages, and threatens, but Gendry takes their bastard son, Jon, with him to the South.

 

  
Prince Rhaegar Targaryen dodges a heavy war hammer on the Trident and Ser Barristan helps him run Robert Baratheon through the chest. He lives, but the realm is still torn apart.

**Author's Note:**

> [My tumblr](http://the-river-of-truth.tumblr.com/)
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> I didn't put up all the ships in the tags because I didn't want to spoil too much for such a short story.


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